


The Hope I Feed On

by hvanwoong



Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:47:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hvanwoong/pseuds/hvanwoong
Summary: In a dark dungeon cell, Hwanwoong imagines sunlight in all its glory.And the caress of Youngjo’s fingertips on his skin.
Relationships: Kim Youngjo | Ravn/Yeo Hwanwoong
Comments: 19
Kudos: 82





	The Hope I Feed On

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all <3 I wrote this little piece tonight because CBH dragged me back into my knight!woong feelings and I always felt there were things left unsaid in my work ‘The Man I Knew.’ None of the fic was told from the perspective of Hwanwoong and I feel like his story needed some telling.  
> This work is a spin-off piece set during the events of The Man I Knew. I would not recommend reading it until you have read that work. You can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791806/chapters/59953795).  
> C/W: References to torture, blood and injury.  
> Vi x

No rays of sun find a path into the small cell, through three feet thick walls or low oppressive ceilings, but a burning torch somewhere down the corridor beyond unfurls orange light through the barred grate in the door. If Hwanwoong closes his eyes or lets his lids flutter enough that his gaze just breaks through his lashes, he can pretend that the heat is sunlight on his skin and the light bathes him in all its glory. There he sits, head back against the wall, and he remembers how it felt to sit in the sun.

Above ground, the heat in Sun City is overwhelming. The summers bring months without rainfall and dust in the streets and burned skin. They bring endless prayers for a burst of rain before crops outside the citadel walls turn brown and wilted. In Hwanwoong’s subterranean cell, the air is cooler and there is still a layer of water and mud from the last humid rainfall more than two weeks ago. The water soaks his clothes but the feeling of damp is familiar, and a little muck on his hands and face is not important; he has not seen his reflection in over a year.

If he were to do so, it might haunt him. A touch of his fingertips tells him that his cheeks are gaunt, and he can track the line of bone with his thumb. It makes him think of soft touches and tender caresses. By now, his eyes must be sunken, the pupils blown by lack of light.

As the torchlight leaves rays of gold on his skin, he closes his eyes and thinks of summers back home. A small smile creeps onto his parched lips as he remembers playing dice games with Geonhak in the palace courtyard, or chasing Dongju through the castle corridors as the sun streamed through the elegant arches. The line of his lips tightens when he recalls a summer with Youngjo.

He remembers how they rode through the forest, late in his nineteenth year, before he was due to celebrate the turning of age into a man. In the woods, they always stole precious kisses, away from the prying eyes of the town. When they dismounted at the river they waded knee deep and Youngjo caught him around the waist and pressed endless kisses to his neck, until he was squirming in his arms and pleading for respite. Joy was a picture on his face. With his eyes closed he can recall it vividly now.

They fell in the water, eventually. When they rose up, Youngjo was so dripping that as he pushed the dark hair back from his face it slicked back in smooth position and water droplets spilled pretty lines over his forehead and into his gleaming eyes. He looked happy. Hwanwoong thought that it must be hard to be happy with the weight of the kingdom and its future resting on his shoulders.

He shifts and then winces.

The wounds on his back have scraped the wall.

Lost in his memories, he’d almost forgotten them.

They’re red raw, only inflicted yesterday. A criss-cross of bloody cuts from the crack of a horsewhip. There was a time when he shared this cell with another prisoner who was trained in medicine, and he would treat Hwanwoong’s wounds with what little supplies they could put together from their meagre provisions. But he was taken away long ago, perhaps to be executed. Hwanwoong will never know. He never knew his alleged crime, either.

Now, he tries to copy the same motions, but it’s difficult when the cuts are on his back. More often he leaves them to soak through his shirt. If they grow infected then it is time away from the cell, or even time away from this plane forever.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he mutters aloud, and he shifts position again.

The pain is less than earlier, but it shoots through his back and across his skin with fervour whenever he moves. If he listens closely then he’s sure his screams still echo around the dungeon walls. They certainly echo around his nightmares. Something about the pain, though, is not so bad. It is better than the boredom.

That’s what eats away at him every night when he cannot sleep. The hundreds of hours, thousands, spent in this cell. Pacing the five steps back and forth from wall to wall. Nothing to think about except memories that eat him from the inside out, and rage that consumes him from the outside in. Pain is a limited entity, with a peak that he can calculate. Boredom and the destruction of his own thoughts is a ceaseless stretch of landscape that he can wander ever further into, walking around in circles, lost in the depths of a consciousness that he’s lost all grasp on.

Anxiety finds its grip on his stomach in those moments. _Youngjo_. Where is Youngjo? Is he hurt? Is he trying to get to him? He’s sure that the gloating news would filter through to him from Helios if any harm came to Youngjo, but at the same time those reasoned thoughts can’t always permeate his fear.

Then, the worse dread:

Is Youngjo even looking for him? Is he coming? _Did I even mean that much to him_?

He shakes his head to rid himself of those thoughts. Of course Youngjo is looking for him. Youngjo loves him. He remembers their last night together, when Hwanwoong made love to him, when he knew him more intimately than he’d ever dreamed it possible to know a man. Youngjo had let him take him, let him have control of his body in a way that a prince ought never give himself up to. Surely, Youngjo would besiege a city for him. If needed, Hwanwoong thinks that he would besiege the heavens.

Even more damaging than the fear is the hope.

Not hope for his rescue, but the hope that he remembers. What did he dream of for him and Youngjo? He was merely his knight, and there would never be a chance of them sharing any more than a bed together. Hwanwoong could not be his consort. And yet he’d had hopes. He’d hoped that one day he would stand at the side of Youngjo’s throne and advise him when Youngjo’s face was knotted in stress; he’d hoped that he’d bring him to bed when the weight of managing a kingdom left him haunting the halls at night; he’d hoped that he’d lead armies in his name to conquer anyone who threatened his love. In a way, it would be _their_ kingdom.

_Pain._

It shoots through his heart down into his abdomen and he cries out. The emotional distress is a worse wound than the bloodied cuts on his back.

‘He’ll come for you,’ he whispers aloud. ‘They all will.’

He tries to bring himself back to one of the daydreams that ground him. If he concentrates hard enough, he can sink so deeply into them that he forgets everything else around him. It has taken more than a year of practice. If he squeezes his eyes shut and feels the warmth of the torch he can fall into thoughts like a river with a low, gentle current that splashes up his back and soothes all of his wounds.

_Youngjo takes his hands in his and presses gentle kisses to his knuckles. His lips are smooth and soft and he grazes them over Hwanwoong’s skin with love. There is pain still in his back but it is dulled by Youngjo’s presence. The door to his cell has been broken down and Seoho holds it open with worried glances over his shoulder, but Youngjo is quite calm. ‘I’m here,’ he whispers, ‘my Woong.’_

_Hwanwoong tries to move, tries to rush. They must escape. Not for him, but because Youngjo is_ here _in Sun City and nowhere is more dangerous. He tries to climb to his feet but Youngjo holds him still and rubs his thumbs over the backs of his hands. ‘We have to - ’_

_‘Ssh,’ hushes Youngjo. ‘You’re safe. You’re with me. I’ll keep you safe.’_

_It feels indulgent to give into his words but Hwanwoong deserves a little indulgence after everything else. There is a part of him that fears showing weakness more than anything, but with his body broken and his mind fractured by too much,_ too much… _he needs to sink into it. Like his most secret fantasy._

_‘I’ll tend your wounds,’ breathes Youngjo. His voice is so rich that it sounds like singing. The music of Hwanwoong’s town rings with trumpets and the twang of kayagum. ‘Lean forwards for me.’_

_Hwanwoong meets his eyes first. They’re dark and shining with the un-spilled tears of lost love. His hair is sweaty from his armour and it curls over his forehead and Hwanwoong lifts his hand to run his fingers through it. It reminds him of when they fought on the battlefield together as youths._ Bless him _, Youngjo never suited the battlefield. He wore it out of duty like the ceremonial clothes of festivals, but he shed it in the evenings and turned to the comfort of peace._

_‘No one will touch you again,’ whispers Youngjo as he presses a stinging rag to Hwanwoong’s back and cleans away the blood. ‘We’ll burn down this city together, now.’_

_The thought of Sun City in flames is so intoxicating that Hwanwoong recalls the flavour of liquor at last. He thinks of fire licking up over the walls and crumbling the buildings to ash. He imagines the screams of his torturers as they burn alive._

_He longs to throw himself into Youngjo’s arms and enjoy his tender embrace, but he reminds himself that he cannot betray such vulnerability to Youngjo; he doesn’t want him to think that he has suffered such for so long. Then, though, Youngjo pulls him close to his chest and kisses his temple._

_‘I missed you,’ he whispers. ‘I love you.'_

_The words are rose petals on Hwanwoong’s abused skin._

_Youngjo breathes life back into his veins. ‘My brave warrior.’_

_Hwanwoong wishes that he had more courage. It haunts him that he cried in this place, that he cried so hard he thought he’d never be able to stop. It’s not knightly. From what his father taught him, it’s not what it means to be a man. But when he cried he felt more in tune with himself than when he kept his face flat and let the pain happen to him. When he cries or screams or yells alone in his cell, he finds a grasp on the agony; it no longer defines him. No one else can see it, though._

_‘You came for me,’ says Hwanwoong._

_Youngjo holds his face in his hands and kisses his forehead. The stroke of gentle skin on skin is nothing like he has felt for so long. ‘Of course I came here for you. I’ll always find you. They’ll never take you from me.’_

_It’s all poetry._

_Hwanwoong lets his cheek fall into Youngjo’s palm and rests there. His eyes fall closed because he feels safe. His prison becomes an open birdcage, with door thrown wide but he lingers for this caress._

_‘No one will ever touch you again.’_

A clang of metal on metal jerks him from his reverie.

Hwanwoong flinches from the wall and looks up to the door. A mean looking tool scrapes on the bars of the window and when the door is thrown open he has to stop himself from shrinking further into the darkness.

Mudeom is the face from his nightmares and the spectre of his days. The torturer is thin and drawn but Hwanwoong knows better than to overpower him. He tried once, and succeeded, and paid the price in agony after he reached the fifteen guards who man the entrance to these dungeons. ‘Wake up,’ says Mudeom in a sing-song voice.

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ says Hwanwoong, a weak protest but an argument nonetheless. His throat is scratchy and when he runs his tongue around his mouth he meets the gap in his teeth from a bloody encounter with Mudeom in the past. It still tastes of metal, sometimes, when he wakes up in the night and feels for the gap.

‘Were you dreaming? Do you see me in your dreams?’ His boots crunch on the wet floor.

‘Fuck you,’ mutters Hwanwoong.

He pays for that with the smack of iron across his face and he swears that he hears his cheekbone crack. As stars spin gleaming yellow and blue across his vision and his hands are thrown out on the ground, he sees Youngjo in his mind’s eye. He thinks of how Youngjo will find his passion for war when it comes to strangling Mudeom before him, and that makes him smile. A sputter of blood spills from his lips and when he looks up into Mudeom’s eyes he spits the blood into his face.

It sprays crimson all across the mottled skin, like an illuminator’s painting.

‘Don’t think I won’t kill you!’ shouts Mudeom, and he hits him again but the pain is clouded by the daydream still fading from Hwanwoong’s mind. A hand rises to his face to wipe the blood away in disgust but it only smears redder.

‘Like Helios would let you.’

‘He’d have no means to protest if my blade had already slipped on your throat.’ His hand closes around Hwanwoong’s neck and Hwanwoong splutters with satisfaction that he’s riled him so.

‘Little bitch,’ he laughs, knowing that Mudeom is tied to a life that includes Hwanwoong as much as Hwanwoong is bound to his fate with _him_. ‘If you can’t handle me, why don’t you run back to daddy?’

The boot in his ribs is a song but Youngjo is the words because it all feels like a performance from the palace players when the dreams of his lover still hover at the forefront of his mind. Pain is a glaze but hope is the meal and it makes a smile spill onto Hwanwoong’s face. There’s blood in his vision but he looks up with pride and honour and all that keeps him sane.

‘I can’t wait until the day I get to kill you,’ says Hwanwoong. There’s nothing his tormenter can do with the words; he’s powerless against the fervent need of his master for Hwanwoong’s survival. ‘What you’ve done to me will be like the games of a child compared to what I’ll do to you.’ He spits out more blood onto the damp earth beneath his feet and hands. ‘Do you see _me_ in your dreams? Your nightmares?’

Hope is a knife more sharp than fear, but Hwanwoong can wield it the way that he wields a sword.

He waits in pain for the moment he’ll live in ecstasy again.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/hvanwoong)   
>  ['the man i knew'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791806/chapters/59953795)


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